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Four Seasons, London [Restaurant Review]

Friday, 26 June 2009

Reviewed by The Wild Boar

Anybody of Oriental descent who has stayed in London for over a week will have known about Four Seasons already, unless s/he has: 1) no social contacts, 2) no interest in food whatsoever or 3) been staying with the mythical crocodiles in the London sewers the whole time. During my time in A levels, anybody who made a short trip to London (about 3.5 hours single way) was obliged to bring back some of the legendary roast duck for his/her friends who had to endure months of canteen college food.

Our love affair with Four Seasons continued well into our university days, meeting up quite often to mingle, exchange stories and to eat food of course. Such was its popularity that if you a good enough social network, you were bound to meet a friend (or acquaintance or random person you met in class) while queuing up. Oh yes the queues were terrible too; 30 to 60 minutes outside in the cold were the norm on weekends. They did have a booking system (kind of), but it merely bumped you to the top of the waiting list and you still had to wait for the current occupants of the table to vacate it. And you were only allowed to sit if all members of the party were present. Being Malaysian, our national viewpoint of punctuality was that being an hour tardy was still acceptable. It doesn’t help prevent the gastric juices oozing out standing outside the glass window watching endless rows of roast duck being skilfully deboned.

Tada! A plate of perfectly de-boned duck.

Now for some of those awesome sauce!

Located in the “other Chinatown” of Bayswater, it was easy to find, but parking on the other hand can be a bit difficult. We went at 6pm to “beat the queue” on a Saturday evening but still ended up queuing for 30 minutes.

Inside, we got the table nearest the entrance which meant that the whole dinner we endured the jealous looks of people still queuing.

Naturally, ordering at least half a roast duck from the “Roast Duck Specialists” (as it says on the menu) was a must, it was the main reason why we went back again after a year’s absence. The meat was tender yet full of duck flavour and the skin was crunchy, but the main difference between this and other restaurants was the sauce; it was amazingly rich and full of Chinese herbs and spices. The restaurant tends to debone the duck lately unless you tell them otherwise (I prefer not to as I feel it’s nicer to chew meat off the bone) and I suspect its because they need the duck carcasses to make the duck sauce.

We also had a small plate of siew yuk (烧肉) - roast belly pork. Our group of friends rarely order this in London but Four Seasons makes one of the better ones here. The meat was mixed with just enough fat to give it taste and make it tender, not too oversalted, and most importantly the skin was still crispy at 6.30pm.

Anyway the tofu has been blended with some other secret ingredients and moulded into egg shaped balls then laid on a bed of green vegetables ladled with an oyster based sauce. The tofu had a softly springy texture and was already very tasty on its own.

For the obligatory token vegetable dish, we chose baby pak choy with garlic. Cooked with some oyster sauce, it was nothing special but done efficiently, not overcooked yet not raw.

We ate all the above with some plain white rice but unsurprisingly, we couldn’t finish it and ended up taking away the leftovers. The PigPig loved the lat chiu yau (辣椒油) - chilli oil here before, but they seemed to have changed brands since we last came. When we finished, a waiter quickly came and took away the dishes, changed the tablecloths and gave us some complimentary sliced oranges to clean our palate.

Now for some reason, as anybody who has gone to one of these old-school Chinese restaurants will know, the service is really bad. In essence, their priority is to get us the food quickly and once we finish, to get us out quickly too. Any lingering after completing our meal will be quickly challenged by the waiters. There are also lots of comments online that the waiters don’t explain the dishes well to non-Chinese people so they find it difficult to order things we usually order and up ordering the usual stuff like Peking Duck, sweet and sour pork, sweetcorn soup.

Anyway all that food (which could really feed four or five people) along with a can of Tiger beer and Chinese tea came up to just under £60.

I personally think that for standard Chinese fare, this restaurant does it the best. Forget Chinatown as I feel that most of them are tourist traps and they have survived so long because there is always another sucker coming around the corner. Obviously this isn’t “posh” Chinese food but there are lots of newer places that cater to the more upmarket crowd in London. Four Seasons is very much a place that university students love, because its good food for good value and students are much more tolerable of poor service.

Extra things:

This has absolutely nothing to do with the Four Seasons hotel chain.

They have a branch in Chinatown but my friends tell me to avoid it and to stick to the original.

A few doors down is a restaurant called Gold Mine and apparently the “original” chef and manager left Four Seasons to set it up. The food there is pretty good, but the duck at Four Seasons still feels better. The Pigpig however can't really tell the difference between the two in terms of the meat but thinks that the sauce at Four Seasons definitely tastes better.

Such great and delicious food. I must admit that I never been to a very good chinese restaurant here in my neighborhood. They are all not really worth visit for the second time. I can not help but noticing that butcher block. It reminds me of my grandma's in Bali. I have one here in my kitchen (Boos block), but it's the blocks put together, unlike this one on your photo or my grandma's they are from a piece of wood. Great review WB!

Wow! What a fantastic looking meal, everything sounds good, but for some reason I find that tofu dish is really mesmerizing me. Your pictures are really good, is that a little point and clicker or an slr I wonder?

Elra:Its just a huge solid piece of wood! It looks like part of an entire trunk from a smallish tree.

foodhoe:Was it because the tofu was torn apart for you to inspect the contents? It was a DSLR; I'm not terribly technical in the details of these things, but it does look like there is a big difference in photo quality between a DSLR and a normal digicam.

nora@ffr:Thanks :-)

Lori Lynn / Vera:But there are so many good things to eat in London, it'll be hard to find enough days to fit them all in.

Helen Yuet Ling Pang:If you're a fan of roast duck, then this is the best place in the whole of London for you, as determined by me and countless hungry university students.